Catch up at Sam's

Hi all,
I'm feeling pretty cheery today . How are you ?
Last time I wrote a blog entry I was about to go on a blind date . The date was good. I'm probably not going to see my datee again ( no spark) and usually I'd been sort of blue about it but I've decided to look on the rosy side of life from now on. And I got through the date without gibbering too much and I actually had a good time. So it could have been a lot worse.
Helping my cheery mood along tremendously was a surprise bunch of flowers from Sam who picked them up because he knows I like tulips and good thing number two, was the exceedingly honest customer at our Amazon book shop, who wrote very nice things about us.
Anyway a catch up on the shop ,low is still away, Malcolm is looking a little moth eaten and even greyer than normal. Two is reading the Richard Dawkins' book The Greatest Show on Earth and explaining bits to me. Mainly bits he knows I'll enjoy, about marsupials and the lack of native mammals in New Zealand. Sam is learning sleight of hand tricks and keeps pulling feather flowers out of people's ears . He isn't very good but is endearingly focused on following the instructions in his book to the letter and learning the unconvincing patter.
I am reading What I loved by Siri Hustvedt for book group.This is not the Sam Haines book group -that was disbanded following the Life of Pi riot.No this is a library based group where most of us are surprisingly mature when we disagree with each other. Hustvedt's novel is a curiously complex book. It has that hyper detailed but ultimately plotlessness of a dream remembered next morning. Still that's the point of a reading group, to make you aware of other authors and other types of writing that those you would normal encounter.

Soulless and dating

I’ve just finished reading Soulless by Gail Carriger which I bought new on the face of a review which called it Jane Austen written by Douglas Adams. Clearly I could not resist.
Soulless concerns the adventures of Alexia Tarabotti a Victorian spinster will the interesting problem of being soulless. I’ve not encounter this particular gimmick before if it is an invention of Miss Carriger’s she should be congratulated. Being soulless means that Alexia has the ability to nullify supernatural entities when she touches them, therefore when attacked by werewolf she is able to make him revert to a human form and vampires are defanged in her presence. This along with the background of Victorian Britain as a superpower supported by its openly vampiric or lupine allies is really interesting. (See the excellent Anno Dracula by Kim Newman for similar but less human –friendly political set up.) I also enjoyed the cameo by Queen Victoria sweeping in like benevolent Lady Catherine de Burgh to ensure that all ended in a suitable romantically fashion.
But ah me! Reviewers lie or clearly haven’t read enough Austen or Adams. This seems to be the author’s first novel and it suffers from a writer who lacks confidence in her own abilities to carry a narrative and maintain a convincing character. Alexia slips into cliché mid plot but thankful is redeemed somewhat before the end of the novel.
There is enough here to make me want to pick up the sequel should I come across it, although perhaps not enough to pre order it. What do you think? A nice new copy (not mine) is on sale at the e-shop so why not order it and let me know?
I’m off on a blind date tonight with a friend of a friend -wish me luck!

And Another Thing

I've just finished reading And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer which is the sixth of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Like most people of my age I read the Hitch-hiker's series when I was a teenager and like a lot of people I loved the anarchy, humour and brains with which Douglas Adams wrote. I actually always preferred the Dirk Gently series. If only because of the eponymous hero -if you meet Arthur at a party you'd go off with an alien too but I reckon I'd be strangely drawn to Dirk.
So is Eoin Colfer's sequel a worthy part of the series ? Well I find myself in the peculiar position, I liked so much of this novel, it is a great idea , I'm glad to be reunited with the characters although why no Fenchurch, and there was plenty of humour. And yet the plot happens and we find ourselves back at almost the same place as we started and frankly Eoin Colfer's interpretation of the characters isn't mine.
But it's that previous relationship I miss, the one between a teenage me and Douglas Adams. Reading Adams is like being greeted by a very large but friendly dog ,it's exciting, it makes you feel all loved up but you got to keep your wits about you or you'll end up on the floor covered in mud ,it's that element of challenge that I don't find in this book. Douglas Adams assured me that the universe was a awesome and sometime awful place but should always be approached with wonder, Colfer's universe is altogether too contained, too domesticated for my liking.
As always let me know what you think. Or better still buy the copy of And Another Thing we are selling, read it and let me know what you think.

Fun with Fangs

Trade is slow today because of the snow. Low to the surprise of everyone, except Sam, has announced that he isn't coming in because he's going to spend a few months in his villa in Spain . This is akin to discovering that the nice old man you stopped to chat to about the weather as he bought the old Hayes manuals every Saturday was once a lead scientist in Nazi Germany's Rocket programme. I mean it doesn't change the fact that he seems like a nice bloke but you are left wondering what else is going on that you don't know about. (True story- ask Two, it happened him )

Anyway back to Low, apparent not only does he have a villa in Spain but a couple of vineyards, a small village or two, rather a lot of land and a hereditary title. It turns out that Low is actually a person of great importance slumming it here for a change of pace . When/if he comes back he has promised to bring me a few bottles of the rather nice red wine that his favourite vineyard produced a few years ago. See I said ages ago that Low was a dark horse.

Some new stock is going on the on-line shop tonight including an Anne Rice book called Master of the Bones. I guess Anne Rice is mother of the modern chick-bit-lit genre although to follow the metaphor Emily Bronte is a cousin at remove and Mary Shelley a grandmother from the Gothic novel side of the family. I read a lot from this genre and I must admit some of them are pretty dire. Anne Rice herself gets a little over-wrought and I believe I've had a mini rant about Laurell K Hamilton before. But occasionally you come across a little gem like Carrie Vaughn , writer of the Kitty Norville Series or the rather wonderful C. E. Murphy , The Walker Papers. The latter I particularly recommend and not just because the author was gracious enough to reply to a fan email I sent her.

So why are these kind of books so popular? I've always been a fan of the horror novel and I think in some ways this is just a feminization of that genre. This is not to say, Stephen King for example has not written some good female characters , I enjoyed the novel The Girl who loved Tom Jordan immensely. But this genre offers us something more, is it the romance elements , they are certainly enjoyable; or is it the episodic nature of many of the books which encourage a soap opera like addiction at worse and a real engagement with the characters at best? Well maybe. I know that I love the escapism of the what if .. elements in these books, what if the supernatural , the eerie, was real? What if werewolves really existed , how would they escape detection in our CCTV age ? If magic was real what jobs would witches and wizards do ? If vampires lived up the road from you what changes would society have to make ? And you know if you absolute had to kiss one, how the hell would you go about it ?

See we talked about books finally. Any comments you'd like to share, please do drop us a line. It would be great to hear from you.

A Violent Outbreak of Poetry and Kissing.

We’ve had the usual stuff going on. Including Christmas – very busy in the run up to the day and then the day itself, I worked, 2 didn’t. Malcolm ate Sam’s turkey sandwiches and thrown them up again in the Movies section.

Sam's been doing a far bit of shouting at book sellers and very occasionally customers, usual when asked about Dan Brown. (No we do not have the new book; and no we are not getting it in. Sam is making a stand.)

We’ve had a reading. Local poets, thin dark boy, friend of low’s very immense stuff, jovial lady poet (very Seamus Heaney her words – in that she mentions animals a bit, Sam’s words), handsome but going to seed, regional accented, sexually explicit poet, gazed very intensely at Spider in the dress who went red during his reading. Last act and emergency stand-in was me –doing some favourite poems and, gulp one original piece of work. It was a weirdly popular event to be repeated in February and called Sam’s Scans, even though some of them didn't.

Special events have included Jane’s(S&M Sisters) wedding which involved, the Bride’s sister Emily catching the flowers and giving the vicar an entirely inappropriate kiss; Two having to check the best man Ray, 74 was still alive, yes he was just very, very drunk and the Bride and Groom having written their own vows, which proved educational.

I had a lovely day and the evening was going very well until the bride’s older brother announced that I was a corker and that we should waltz for the rest of the evening. I’m not a great dancer but even so I defy anyone to waltz to Agadoo. Terrence, my ardent elderly paramour was about 4 ft 8 so spend most of the dance buried in my cleavage. Every time we spun round I caught sight of Two laughing at me, however he did eventually rescue me and I was so glad I may have l given him an entirely inappropriate smacker of a kiss. Which proves that one, I really do need to give up champagne and two, its time to start dating again. (I meant other people not Two clearly. He’s my friend and we don’t consider each other that way)

And now here we are 2010 we have new stock in the shop and I promise to blog more regularly.